Category Archives: Fruit

Chef Dave Cruz will be cooking in Oakland. (Photo courtesy of the chef)

Chef Dave Cruz To Do Pop-Ups in Oakland

You know him as the original chef for Thomas Keller’sAd Hoc restaurant in Yountville. Now, after leaving the Keller fold, Chef Dave Cruz is embarking on a series of pop-up events in Oakland — a prelude to opening his own restaurant some day.

The first dinner, May 18, will feature Chefs Simone Fung and Sebastian Mendieta of S+S Gastropub, cooking with Cruz at their downtown loft on Jackson Street in Oakland. The five-course dinner that night will be reminiscent of the hearty, seasonal meals he did at Ad Hoc. Dishes will include salad of Asian baby greens with slow cooked egg; crisp pork belly and clams; and strawberry shortcake with strawberry sorbet, Tokaiji-macerated strawberries and arlette cookies. Price is $85 per person.

Two seatings are available for the BYOB dinner: 5:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. The exact location of the dinner will be emailed to guests after a reservation is made.

Snails — being raised for escargot and other gourmet dishes — on an urban Maui farm.

Napili FLO Farm

If former massage therapist Monica Bogar has her way, Maui restaurants will some day spotlight organic snails on their menus.

After all, there’s already a waiting list of restaurants eager for the mollusks she is growing aquaponically in ingenious systems devised by her and her Uncle Tony. I had a chance to visit their homestead on the west side of the island, during my trip to Maui, courtesy of the tourism and conventioner’s bureau.

An urban farmer for the past 12 years, Bogar started her Napili FLO Farm a year ago. She now sells her microgreens, edible flowers and watercress to Maui restaurants such as Star Noodle, Hula Grill, and Pineapple Grill, the latter where Isaac Bancaco is chef and a huge supporter of hers.

Pick you way through Uncle Tony’s backyard to find a miraculous series of tanks — built from scavenged items, including styrofoam boxes, old fish tanks and a grandson’s former wash tub. “We are aquaponics dumpster-divers,” Bogar says proudly with a chuckle.

Sunsweet Growers, Inc., whom you know for its dried fruit, is getting into the baking business with its new line of breads, cookies and pastries — all made with dried plums (otherwise known by their less fashionable moniker: prunes).

The products tout the healthfulness of prunes, which are higher in antioxidants and fiber, and lower in sugar, than raisins and dried cranberries.

What sets the baked goods apart, too, is their color. They’re made with purple wheat and purple corn, giving them eye-catching swirls of vividness.

Recently, I had a chance to sample the products, which are available at Costco in Southern California, and which will make their way to Northern California Costco locations in the near future.

That’s what you’ll be humming, when you dig into this lusty pasta dish.

Because there’s wine, wine, everywhere in it.

There’s Syrah in the meaty duck ragu that tops it. There’s even Syrah flour in the pasta dough for the homemade fettuccini. And of course, a glass of — what else — Syrah to sip alongside it all.

I was inspired to cook “Venetian Duck Ragu” with “Syrah Fettuccini” when I received samples of the new WholeVine products from Santa Rosa.

Company founders Barbara Banke and Peggy Furth started their line of grapeseed flours, grape skin flours and grape seed oils — all gluten-free — as a way to make greater use of what vineyards provide. They’ve also added a line of four different gluten-free cookies ($6.99 for eight of them), as well as a line of eight different wheat crackers ($6.99 for 12), all made with their flours.

Syrah skin flour.

Moreover, they donate a portion of profits to charitable organizations that help children in need.